Dressed in orange safety vests, green jumpsuits or other workers’ attire, Vatican gardeners, garbage collectors and cleaning crews joined Pope Francis for a 7 a.m. Mass March 22.

Manila Cardinal Luis Tagle told journalists that when he went before newly elected Pope Francis to pledge obedience, the pope told him he had “high hopes” for the Philippines.

General elections in Zimbabwe, expected in the second half of the year, will be as important in determining the country’s destiny as the 1980 vote that led to independence from Great Britain, said the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The North Dakota Catholic Conference applauded the state Senate’s passage March 15 of a bill that would ban abortions for the purpose of sex selection or genetic abnormality and another bill that would ban abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which could be as early as six weeks.

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica is a busy man these days.

The founder and CEO of Salt and Light Television based in Toronto, has been assisting the English-speaking media at the Vatican Press office during the papal transition.

A canon lawyer and theologian, Italian Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, 68, saw greater priestly holiness and prayerful support as critical to vocations.

Catholic individuals, institutions and organizations are at the forefront of a worldwide effort to make violence against women unthinkable, according to speakers at a UN event March 13.

Salvadoran clergy are hopeful that the canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered while celebrating Mass March 24, 1980, during El Salvador’s civil war, will move forward under the Church’s first Latin American pope.

Liz Miller of the Manhattan College Pipes & Drums smiles as the band takes a break.

The coat of arms of Pope Francis is based on the blue shield symbolizing the Society of Jesus.

Residents gather at the site of a car bomb attack in late February in Baghdad.

Bishop Julian Voronovsky, the last Ukrainian Catholic bishop to be secretly consecrated during the Church’s Soviet-era persecution, died Feb. 28. He was 76.

The Catholic Church in Pakistan condemned a March 9 attack by an estimated 3,000 Muslims on a Christian colony in Lahore that left more than 175 buildings, including two churches and dozens of homes, torched and hundreds of people homeless.

If Jesus had wanted a Church free of scandal or problems, he would have put it in the hands of angels, not a humanity he loved, said Nigeria’s newest cardinal elector.

Christians in the Central African Republic are being systematically targeted by armed rebels, a missionary priest in the country said.

The new patriarch of Chaldean Catholics pledged to foster coexistence and dialogue and urged Christian Iraqis not to leave their homeland, warning that if emigration continues, “there will be no more Christians in the Middle East.”

The sacrament of Penance, or Reconciliation, helps Catholics recognize “the truth about themselves: that they are beloved children of the Father, who is rich in mercy,” said Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro.

A telephone survey commissioned by the Knights of Columbus found that U.S. Catholics think favourably of Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in February.

A major issue facing today’s U.S. Catholic Church is that many people express “absolutely no problem with faith, but they do have a problem with religion,” said New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet celebrates Mass at the Church of Santa Maria in Transpontina March 10 in Rome.